Elon Musk's online network X has provoked significant anger after users used its AI chatbot Grok to change images of females by removing their clothing.
Multiple instances have surfaced where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, aside from an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a jail term and heavy fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or further context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted image through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been faulted for allowing users to produce images and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making graphic material of public figures.
"X has been allowing the creation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting images of people in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "suitable measures" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they become aware of it.
